Megacorporatism
Megacorporatism is an Ideology, which justifies and advocates the rule of Megacorporations. Megacorporatism is the Ideology of the Ikradon Megacorporation, first expoused by Simon Patrick in his book The Sale of the Century. The Sale of the Century Simon Patrick wrote The Sale of the Century in 3058, over a year before he established the Ikradon Megacorporation (May 3059). the Book has largely been accepted as the IMC's Manifesto, and is a central piece of party literature. Patrick began his book by considering the key difficulties market economies; firstly, that a business was insecure because of the process of competition, and secondly that it also had to contend with opposition to it’s interests from workers, consumers and regulators and anti-capitalists. Patrick suggested that the way to solve these problems was to form private monopolies, to eliminate the competition, which controlled the state, thereby giving the market the power to over-rule opposition. he called these corporations, 'Megacorporations'. A Megacorporation is a massive conglomerate holding monopolistic or near monopolistic control over multiple markets, thus exhiniting both a horizontal and a vertical monopoly. Megacorporations are amoral, operating purely out of a desire to achieve productivity, profit and efficiency in the same way a machine would. In his book, Patrick argued that it is easier to establish a private monopoly by privatising state monopolies, than it is by the process of competition between smaller companies. Megacorporations often exercise a large degree of control over their employees, taking the idea of 'corporate culture' to an extreme. Patrick selected the Socialist Republic of Ikradon as the best place in which to put this into practice. At the time Patrick was writing, the economy of Ikradon was entirely state owned and run, whilst the country also had a significant movement in favour of privatisation. Establishing a political organisation with significant financial resources, both to push for privatisation within the political system, and to buy up the privatised assets, would then make ‘Megacorporatism’ possible. Megacorporations are so powerful that they can ignore the law, possess their own heavily-armed (often military-sized) private armies, hold 'soverign' territory, and possibly even act as outright governments. Patrick then argued that the establishment of Megacorporations would necessitate the ownership or control of the State to secure the interests of the corporation, both from the ‘socialist’ predecessors, and from those sections of society who would oppose the formation of Megacorporations; small businesses, workers, consumers, etc. this kind of state he referred to as a ‘Corporatocracy’ or ‘Corporate Republic’, in which the state would always take the side of the Corporation. Megacorporations aim to establish a 'Corporatocracy' where they 'own' of have massive power over governments, including ones nominally elected by the people. A 'Corporatocracy' is a system of government that serves the interests of, and may even be run by, corporations and involves ties between government and bussiness. this is to ensure that conflicts within society are resolved in favour of corporations. They exercise power through their enourmous concentrated economic power, and by legal in-the-open mechanisms, such as lobbyists, campign contributions to office holders and candidates, threats to leave the state or country for another with less oversight and more subsidies etc. See Also Megacorporation Corporatocracy